


The Library of Lost Things

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magical Realism, some characters have special powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5146610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're in a library."</p><p>Rin makes a bristling, impatient noise. "I can see <i>that</i>. What am I doing in a library?"</p><p>"You're lost," says Makoto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Library of Lost Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Ifrit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ifrit/gifts).



> Thank you Lady_Ifrit for your wonderfully broad, suggestive prompts!  
> I had a lot of leeway for creativity, and I can't resist a good fantasy prompt, so this is what I went with: _scifi/fantasy AU: a mutant AU where Makoto's is empathy_. This was a real adventure to write. I hope you like it.

There's a boy in the library.

Makoto hears him before he sees him. It is a perfectly routine, perfectly average day; he is doing his shelving of the new books like he always does in the afternoon, when, from somewhere in between _113.208 The Word on the Tip of Your Tongue_ and _114.02 Shower Thoughts_ , there's a muffled _thunk_ followed by a swear word.

Makoto's cart comes to a slow halt. He leaves it in the aisle, and walks over.

The boy is wearing a black sleeveless tee, sneakers and jeans. He looks to Makoto like an ordinary teenager, no different from him, lanky and well-built. He is rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm, and he's frowning at the shelf like it's just offended him deeply.

"Hello," says Makoto, somewhat hesitant.

The boy turns to look at him. He has wine-red hair and a glare that could burn up the sun.

"Hi," he says.

 _It speaks,_ thinks Makoto, in a rising panic. _He speaks._

"Uh. This might sound rude, but. Where did you come from?"

The boy scratches his head, gaze darting all around him. He seems, for the first time, to notice where he is; his eyes are keen and narrowed, and his face is a wonderfully blank page.

"I woke up in a small room," says the boy. "I opened the door. I walked out. And then - I was here."

Makoto feels his knees start to go weak. He tries to breathe, closes his eyes for a second, and opens them.

The boy's still there, and he's got a book in his hands.

He opens it.

"Oh dear," Makoto murmurs.

 

* * *

 

The library in Iwatobi is twenty minutes away by bicycle. It is inland, in the opposite direction from the sea. They have to cross the bridge over the Shiwagawa, pass a grove of sycamore trees and a shrine to the mountain god, and then they're on the quiet road north towards the fruit sellers' market.

At the end of that road is a building that used to be a school, and in that building, with its spacious hall and its labyrinthine maze of rooms, is the library.

Makoto loves the library.

He is five when his parents take him there for the first time, when he has read everything there is to read in his house, and Haru-chan's house too; they go together, he and Haru-chan and his mom and dad and Haru-chan's mom and dad.

The ceiling seems to stretch all the way to the sky. The shelves are so tall that Makoto has to climb a ladder to get to the top row. He is still too little, so he is not allowed to climb the ladder by himself. The friendly librarian, Amakata-san, does it for him. She tells him she used to be a teacher in this school, before it turned into a library, and she smiles at him and helps him pick out stories of far-off lands.

It is there that Makoto falls in love with the smell of books.

It is there, in between the aisles and the dust jackets, that he realises there are hundreds, there are thousands of lives out there in the world, and everything that he feels is real, and that somewhere out there, someone else is feeling it too.

 

* * *

 

Makoto does the only thing he knows how to do, when confronted with an emergency: he hustles the boy into the librarian's office at the back of the loans counter, sits him down in a hard plastic chair, apologises for the lack of a cushion, and asks if he would like to have something to drink.

At the offer of hot chocolate, the boy makes a face. "Too sweet. I don't like that stuff."

Makoto, temporarily stunned ( _who doesn't like chocolate?_ ), reaches for the barley tea in the back of the fridge instead and pours an oversized mugful for his errant visitor.

"What's your name?" he asks, as he sets the cup down on the table and pulls up a chair for himself.

"Rin," says the boy.

He says this with a strange kind of hesitation, like the sound of the word in his mouth is funny, or, maybe, like he's waiting to see what Makoto's reaction will be. _It suits him,_ is what Makoto thinks, with certainty.

He keeps his face poker-straight. "Any last name?"

Rin frowns, and shakes his head. "I can't remember. You don't think my name is girly?"

Makoto has a feeling that _it suits you_ isn't quite the right thing to say, so he merely smiles wanly. It was too much to hope for, he supposes, that the boy would remember his last name.

"I'm Makoto. Tachibana Makoto… the assistant librarian. It's nice to meet you," he adds automatically. He can't help feeling kind of silly, under the circumstances.

"Makoto, huh?" says Rin, flashing him a grin. "Nice to meet you."

He picks up the mug on the table. It is an incongruous, cheery yellow, painted with sunbursts and the words _World's Best Teacher_. He wonders if a student had given it to Amakata-san, years ago. He wonders if Amakata-san is enjoying her honeymoon in Paris. He wishes desperately that he was not alone here.

"Um, do you remember… how old you are? Where you're from?"

"Seventeen," says Rin. "And no. Where the hell am I? I don't remember anything from before I woke up in that room."

 _That's a coincidence,_ Makoto nearly blurts out; _I'm seventeen too,_ but one look at Rin's baleful gaze over the rim of the mug tells him that he's got better things to be concerned with right now.

"This room," Makoto says. "It didn't happen to be kind of dusty and full of weird crap, did it?"

"Wow. It's like you were there."

Makoto sighs. He figures the facts are as good a place as any to start, and so, he takes off his glasses, sets them on the table, and tells Rin:

"You're in a library."

Rin makes a bristling, impatient noise. "I can see _that_. What am I doing in a library?"

"You're lost," says Makoto.

 

* * *

 

Makoto is nine years old when he finds the red box.

He's got a huge pile of books, as usual, and his spot by the window is taken up today by a group of older girls working on a school project, so he asks Amakata-san very politely where he can go to read.

The librarian smiles, and in a conspiratorial whisper, tells him to head out the corridor, turn right and count three rooms down to his left. That is her favourite spot of all, she says. You can see the sakura flowering outside in springtime, and on winter days like these, there are snow-capped mountains in the distance that catch the sun's last rays, glistening white and dreamlike.

Makoto thanks her and walks away, precious cargo precariously balanced in his arms.

When they'd turned the school into a library, they'd demolished only half the classrooms, the ones that joined up to the main hall. This was the lending section, the space with all the books. The other half remained: reading rooms, study rooms, rooms with special books that have long titles and red stickers which mean you cannot take them out of the library, rooms that Makoto has never seen before…

With a start, he realises he's lost track of the way.

Makoto, being a practical child, figures that one empty room is as good as another and ducks into the nearest doorway, and it is then that his foot hits a hard metal object with a _clang_.

It has a strange kind of aura. Nothing that Makoto can see, but when he looks at it, he feels…

Like it is treasured. Like it is very precious to someone, this little red metal box with black handles that squeak at the hinges when he picks it up, and so he tucks it under his arm and settles onto a pile of cushions for an afternoon of peaceful and wholly uneventful reading.

He nearly forgets about it until closing time, which is when he brings all the books back to the counter, and finds the box at the bottom of the pile in his arms.

"Ah!" he says, remembering, as he holds it out to Amakata-san. "I found this."

The librarian's eyes widen, just a small fraction.

"Someone lost it," says Makoto.

He doesn't know how he knows this. All he knows is that it's true, and that someone is surely looking very hard for this this box, even if they do not know it yet.

Amakata-san takes the box from his hands. She places it on the counter. It makes a strange, hollow kind of noise that vibrates, like it is plucking a heartstring right in the middle of Makoto's chest. _Twang, twang,_ it hums.

"You can see this, huh? I should have guessed it would be you, Makoto-kun."

She bends down so she's eye to eye with Makoto, puts a finger on her smiling lips, and whispers a secret to him.

 

* * *

 

Haru takes this unexpected development very calmly, Makoto feels.

"You have a boy living in your library," he repeats.

Makoto nods.

"A lost boy."

Makoto nods again.

It is summer, the school holidays have just begun, and the days melt into one another here in their sleepy port town, where all things wash to shore. They are sitting on the steps outside Haru's house at sunset, staring at a view that Makoto knows by heart.

He wonders if Rin has seen a sight like this before. He wonders if he remembers it.

Shiro-chan, the white cat, treads silently up the stairs towards them. Haru reaches down absently to scratch her between the ears. He turns, and looks at Makoto with a gravely serious expression.

"Are you feeding him right?"

"Haru!" Makoto cries. "I'm hiding this guy in the library and that's all you think about?"

Haru gives him a pointed look. "You're not hiding him. He showed up there himself. It's his fault. And you're terrible at cooking."

"It's not really _his_ fault - "

"Can he even eat normal things?"

"Yeah," says Makoto. "I gave him some barley tea when we first met. He could drink it. So I've been giving him half my lunch and something from the _combini_ , when I can."

Haru wrinkles his nose in disapproval. Shiro-chan makes a small mewling noise to match. "That's not real food. I'll make some real food and pass it to you before you go to the library every day."

"Haru, you don't have to - you can't even _see_ him or talk to him."

Haru shrugs. "It's not like I have anything better to do. I like cooking."

( _I want to help you -_ )

Makoto knows what Haru is really saying. He's never needed his empath's powers to tell him that. He is grateful. He knows he doesn't need to say that aloud, either, for Haru to understand.

"Hey, Haru?"

"Hmm?"

"Rin likes meat."

Makoto shoots him a sideways glance, and smiles beatifically.

"And he isn't really into fish."

Haru returns Makoto's gaze with a flat stare of his own that conveys, with all of his usual eloquence, exactly what he thinks of Rin's dietary preferences.

Makoto laughs. "I wish you could talk to him, Haru, really. I think you'd be friends."

Haru looks extremely doubtful.

"Rin likes cats, too," Makoto adds, and Haru blinks, as if he's just realised that he's still petting Shiro-chan, who's now curled up lazily by his feet.

"It's not like I like cats. It's just that they hang around here," Haru mutters.

"Well," says Makoto, "Rin's just hanging around the library, too. He can't really go anywhere else…"

He trails off as evening fades into dusk. The cry of the gulls fills the air. They circle, far in the distance, silhouetted against a crimson sky. Rin's eyes are that exact colour sometimes, thinks Makoto.

"Who lost him?" asks Haru, plucking the question from Makoto's head, like he always does.

Makoto sighs. "I wish I knew."

"You must be very careless," remarks Haru, "to lose a person."

 

* * *

 

A lost person is different from a lost box, or a lost wedding ring, and Makoto is not sure what to do, but he reasons: if he shows Rin as many sights as he can, perhaps something will jog his memory, and then he will know who lost him, and he can go home.

"Do you want to go home?" he asks Rin.

Rin looks nonplussed.

"I guess I'd like to be found," he says.

Makoto thinks the two are not quite exactly the same thing. But then again, he thinks, it _is_ maybe a bit much, to ask a question like that of someone without any memories of home.

 

* * *

 

They look at photographs, or at least, they try. It is too much for Makoto and Amakata-san to sort every lost photograph that comes their way, so they are broadly grouped: scenery, people, places, everything else. There is a lot of everything else.

"There are too many," Rin complains, after a while. "My head is swimming."

"So is mine," Makoto admits.

Rin pauses over a picture of a beach.

"Does this make you remember anything?" Makoto asks eagerly.

Rin taps a finger thoughtfully against it. "I think it's important to me. The beach. Somehow…"

Makoto holds his breath, but Rin after a while, shakes his head, pockets the photo, and walks on.

 

* * *

 

Makoto brings Rin books of all kinds from the regular library to read. Books about Japanese history. Books about nature. Books about geography, and about different towns and countries all over the world, books where people live in houses stacked fifty storeys high, books where they dwell on Mars.

Rin, he discovers, reads really, really fast.

When he catches up with the stack that Makoto brings to him daily, he starts to plow through the shelves on this side, in order, starting from _100.00 Phone Numbers_ , so catalogued because they are so mind-numbingly monotonous that there is no variation whatsoever in their contents.

He goes about it with a relentless zeal. It does not take Makoto long to realise that Rin goes about everything with a relentless zeal.

Makoto comes to know the shape of him well, his lost boy.

He is talkative one second, intensely brooding the next. He has a slouching habit when he reads at the table. He opens the books flat, props his head up in one hand, and flips so quickly he looks like he's skimming idly, but afterwards, he'll remember everything.

He seems to like books about families. He talks to Makoto about his, one day.

"Do you have a family?" Rin asks.

"Yes," says Makoto. He pulls out his phone, leans across the table and shows Rin the photo on his wallpaper. It is a picture they took last summer, while holidaying in Kyoto; they're standing in front of a lake with smiles on their faces, the cypress shingles of Ginkakuji's roof peeking out of the background against a breezy blue sky.

"My parents, and the twins. Ran and Ren. They're nine years old."

Rin edges his chair closer so they're side by side, and examines the picture with curiosity. "What are they like?"

"Mmm, Ran's kind of stubborn? She always wants her way. She fights with Ren over the last piece of food on the table." Makoto laughs. "But she's kind, really. Ren is more gentle."

Rin snorts. "It sounds like Ran's, like - two minutes older, or something, and never lets Ren forget it."

"That's exactly how it is," says Makoto, with mounting excitement. "Rin… do you have siblings? Do you remember? It sounds like…"

But Rin, after an infinitesimal pause, shakes his head.

"I don't know," he says brusquely.

A moment of silence passes, punctuated with the whirring of the fan in the still, sepia air.

Makoto looks down at his phone again. He puts it away.

Rin stands up, hands in pockets, and walks off towards the shelves at the back.

Makoto wonders if he has been clumsy with his words. He wonders if Rin is bored with his company. Rin is brilliant and restless, and Makoto is the only person he has to talk to.

It must be lonely, being lost.

 

* * *

 

 _Your child is an empath,_ Amakata-san says to Makoto's parents.

Makoto takes this in his stride. He does not totally understand what this means, because it is not a power that anyone can see. Not like Haru's incredible talent with water, or the way the old fisherman keeps his goldfish alive and happy. Those are _useful_ powers.

 _Will you let him help me in the library?_ Amakata-san asks.

_He needs training. If he's left alone - it will become too much for him to cope with. All the lost things everywhere. All the feelings he can sense from others._

Makoto lets the grown ups talk, in the quiet of the librarian's office. He is more interested in the machine he has just discovered, which dispenses hot chocolate with the press of a single button. Makoto loves hot chocolate.

He gets to spend more time in the library, after that day, and Amakata-san takes him to the _other_ side, the side that is normally closed to public.

It is huge. Rosewood shelves stretch from wall to wall, stacked with more books than Makoto has ever imagined in his life, and beyond that -

There are rooms upon rooms, rooms with glass cases full of glimmering, starlike wishes, rooms with cupboards that cannot be opened, rooms with spare change and paperclips and rubber bands of all colours.

Amakata-san explains to him that this part of the library is closed to the public, because ordinary people do not see any of this.

"Only special people," she says, with a smile. "Like you, Makoto-kun."

Makoto wants to tell her that he is ordinary, the most ordinary person, but he can see _everything_ in the library of lost things, and he is enraptured, and overwhelmed with all the feelings of the world, pouring into him from every nook and cranny.

He feels like he might cry. Carefully, lovingly, he dusts off every glistening teardrop, and cradles them close in the innermost part of his heart. He does not cry.

 

* * *

 

They look at trinkets. It's a long shot, Makoto figures, but there's no telling what might trigger something in the back of Rin's mind. A small pewter pendant catches his attention.

"Hey, it's kind of like mine," says Rin.

Makoto inspects the pendant hanging at Rin's chest. So it is.

"Does someone you know have a matching one?" he suggests. "That they lost, maybe?"

Rin frowns. "I can't remember."

His fingers sift restlessly through a pile of oddments that Makoto hasn't had time to sort. Rings, bracelets, satin anklets, bands of leather and lace; he looks like he's thinking hard, and Makoto, looking at Rin looking at the jewellery, thinks that he is undeniably eye-catching, that maybe some of these things could have been his, in his other life.

Rin's wandering hand comes to a sudden halt above a pair of black headphones. Coiled up on themselves, nondescript and brandless, they're almost invisible in the pile of shiny objects.

"That shouldn't be there," says Makoto. "They should be in the music room… I think."

He reaches out to take them from Rin, but stops midair when he sees Rin staring down at them, like he is fixated on something so near yet so far.

"Music," he says suddenly.

"Music?"

"I love music. I remember that. I listened every night, with headphones just like these…"

 

* * *

 

Later, Makoto will reach into his own bag for his MP3 player and hand it to Rin, place his headphones around his ears himself, carefully, snugly, and hit _play_ on his favourite song by ONE OK ROCK.

Later, Rin will hear the strains of a chorus so familiar he might break down and weep. He nearly does, but not for the memory it stirs; rather, for the knowledge that across impossible, untold dimensions, he has fallen headlong into the space of a boy who listens to the same music he does.

That is for later, though, and for now, Rin and Makoto walk on in the library of lost things. Their footsteps resound through the vastness of the corridors, and they leave handprints in their wake, in the way of human beings.

They leave handprints on each other, too, invisible ones they do not notice till after.

 

* * *

 

They pass the room of hearts.

Rin stops outside the door, but Makoto shakes his head and keeps on walking.

He knows what lies within, and it is not for everyone to see, the truth of a person's heart: there are black hearts and glass hearts, hearts with fracture lines like filaments threading through them, broken hearts hastily mended with gauze-white promises.

People lose their hearts a lot.

(He wonders what Rin's heart is like. He thinks it will be warm, a tenderly blazing sun.

Sometimes, he wonders what his own is like.)

 

* * *

 

One day, Rin gets it into his mind to re-organise the entire office.

"It's so _messy_. How do you find anything on this desk?" he asks, accusingly.

Makoto looks at his desk.

There _are_ an awful lot of piles of books on it. Some of them, he thinks, are probably overdue. He admits to himself with some shame that he is not _quite_ good enough of a librarian to keep track of his own loans. He does pay all his fines very promptly, though.

Rin gathers all the pens and pencils in one heap, grabs the _World's Best Teacher_ mug off the top of the fridge and dumps them inside.

"Stationery," he says, "goes in _here_."

Makoto, with a laugh, surrenders; Rin's hard to resist.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Makoto comes in to find Rin asleep in a sunbeam; sometimes, he'll be sitting at Makoto's desk, feet on the table and chair tipped back, nose in a book.

Today, he is standing right by the doorway, peering curiously over Makoto's shoulder.

"Where is he?" asks Haru.

"Here," says Makoto, pointing at Rin.

"Hey," says Rin. "Thank you for the food."

Haru nods vaguely in Rin's direction.

"I've heard a lot about you," he says.

Rin's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, _really?_ "

 _This is getting off to a wonderful start_ , thinks Makoto. He gestures at Haru to come in. He isn't really _supposed_ to be here, but since Amakata-san isn't around, and it's school holidays, and no one else comes into this half of the library anyway, he figures it'll be okay.

Besides, it just feels weird for Haru and Rin not to know each other.

They walk over to Makoto's desk. Rin trails behind Haru, hands in his pockets.

"Rin says hi and thanks for the food," Makoto tells Haru, a little belatedly. He sets down his satchel.

"It's nothing," says Haru. "No one should have to eat Makoto's cooking."

"Is your best friend always like this?" Rin asks.

Makoto laughs. "Yeah, pretty much."

"He's right, though. Your cooking is shitty."

" _Hey!_ "

Rin shoots him a grin.

Makoto tries to look angry, and fails.

Haru sits down on the edge of the table. He follows Makoto's gaze briefly towards Rin, before looking around the library; Makoto can see his keen eyes taking in every detail of the shelves, the ladders, the faint, flickering golden glow of the lights that hang from the ceiling, and he wishes Haru could see what he sees.

Rin gives Makoto a nudge in the ribs. "What have you been telling him about me?"

"Um. That you like meat? And not fish."

"And cats," Haru adds.

Makoto looks up in surprise. "You can hear Rin?"

"I can guess what he asked."

"He's pretty sharp," Rin remarks.

"When he wants to be," says Makoto, with a fond smile.

Haru, one eyebrow raised, ignores this latest exchange and reaches into his bag. He takes out his watercolours and sketch pad.

Makoto lights up at the sight. "Ah! Haru, are you painting the library?"

"I was thinking of it. I'll never get to see this side of it again. It's a good chance. But…"

Haru's voice trails off, and he taps the end of his brush against the paper in his lap. There's a new kind of look on his face as he studies Makoto intently.

"I think I'd like to paint Rin instead. I want to see what he looks like on paper."

"Paint… Rin?" Makoto echoes.

Rin folds his arms. "How is _that_ going to work?"

Haru glances at Makoto. His gaze flicks over towards the librarian's office.

Makoto gets the hint. He goes and fetches Haru a glass of water for his paints, and another for him to drink. He doesn't ask questions. He knows, with Haru, that the answers will come in their time.

Haru dips his brush into the water, then in the red in his palette. He closes his eyes.

"Makoto," he says.

He holds out his left hand.

Makoto reaches out to touch it. He keeps his eyes on Rin.

Rin, mouth half-open, stares; Makoto gives him a reassuring smile, fingers steady in Haru's palm. He fixes an image in his mind, this picture of Rin in his black tee, sneakers and jeans. That intoxicatingly wine-red hair falling into his eyes. A grin like a weapon one second, and the next, like the warmest of summer breezes, and he's sun-kissed in a way that his pale skin belies, he's luminous, like his light shines from the inside.

Makoto hears Haru's sharp intake of breath, feels his sudden shudder at the imprint.

He raises brush to paper.

And Rin gasps in wonder as he watches the lightest flick of Haru's wrist turn into strands of flyaway hair; as Haru, eyes closed, paints the image that Makoto sends to him, shapes the watercolours to his will. The entire desk seems to tremble along with the glass at Haru's side. He is speaking to the water that flows from his brush, Makoto knows, but it is not the kind of speech that needs words.

It is like watching a symphony take shape, under the baton of an invisible conductor.

"How is he doing that?" Rin whispers.

"For Haru, the water is alive," Makoto says, simply.

 

* * *

 

When Makoto asks Rin if he would like to check out more of the lost rooms this afternoon, Rin shakes his head, pensive.

Haru's left for home. His painting of Rin hangs, drying, on the wall behind Makoto; Rin keeps looking at it, like he can't believe it's real.

Makoto, who is good at silences, lets Rin be as he goes about his work.

He is busy that afternoon. There is an unusually high concentration of stuffed toys and sweaters. He catalogues them, neat and tidy; fills in ledger records in strong, steady handwriting and tells himself for the thousandth time that he is _really_ going to get round to digitising everything like he once told Amakata-san he would.

Rin drinks three cans of cola.

"I feel - "

He breaks off abruptly, gaze drifting over to the painting again, and Haru's empty glass on the table.

"When I saw - Haru - when I saw him do his thing, with water, I felt…"

Makoto waits.

"Like, there was something there. Like water is really important in my life. This sounds nuts."

Makoto merely raises his eyebrows at that.

"I've known Haru since we were babies," is all he says.

Rin snorts in amusement. "Fine, fine, yeah - I guess you're used to weird talk about water."

"Mmhmm." Makoto grins wryly.

Rin takes the photo of the beach out of his pocket. He's carried it in there since they found it, in the back of his jeans, and it is growing crumpled; he smooths it out on the table, and studies it again.

"Maybe I used to swim," he says, suddenly, and Makoto, with a watchful eye on Rin, thinks he sees him -

 _Shimmer_ \- blur around the edges, for a second or so -

Makoto holds his breath.

But it lasts no longer than the moment it takes to blink, and when Makoto looks again, Rin's right there. Same as always.

"Haru swims," says Makoto.

"Yeah." Rin nods. "Figures."

"He can feel the water, so - his swimming's beautiful. Really. He looks like he belongs there, like a dolphin. I wish you could see it, Rin."

"I wish I could too," says Rin. " I have a feeling I might see… I don't know, _something_ important that I've never seen before."

He forms a fist and clenches it so tight his knuckles turn white. The fingers of his other hand go limp, letting go of the photograph; it floats to the ground in slow motion before Makoto's eyes.

"You know that feeling when you wake up from a dream, and it's so fresh in your mind, but when you try to grab it it's like thin air? And you can't remember a damn thing?" he says.

And Makoto, recognising the call for extreme measures, fetches him a can of Cherry Coke.

 

* * *

 

Day by day, Rin starts to push the limits.

Makoto has seen what happens to lost things, beyond this space; they disintegrate into nothingness, along with the last traces of the bonds that tether them to reality here in the library, to the hope of being _found_ , one day, however faint and remote.

Amakata-san had told him, years ago.

_Don't take lost things out of the library, Makoto-kun. Or they will truly be lost. Forever. Don't forget the first law: every lost thing belongs to someone. And surely, they are looking for it…_

Makoto's lost things do not normally try to wander out of the library on their own.

He tells Rin that he is not to wander out of the library on his own, or at all, under any circumstances; and Rin's okay with it for the first two weeks or so, but then -

One day, Makoto comes into the library and Rin's nowhere to be seen.

He does not panic, not at first. He makes his usual rounds, scouring the rooms for lost things that showed up overnight; he checks through the aisles, goes back, looks into his office again.

Rin's not there.

Makoto feels a rising anxiety, tight in the back of his throat, like a muffled scream.

Then he remembers - something Rin said to him about wanting to see the sky -

He goes to the stairwell at the back of the library, takes the stairs two at a time, runs till he's breathless, calling, _Rin, Rin,_ until he emerges at the rooftop pink-cheeked and panting, and there's Rin, lying on his back on the concrete ground.

"Hey, Makoto," he calls, raising a hand and waving.

Makoto's footsteps come to a shuddering halt.

He opens his mouth. Tries to yell at Rin for nearly giving him a heart attack. What if the rooftop had been out of bounds, what if he'd stepped out here and dissipated into shards and fragments, _what if_ -

But then Rin turns to look at him. His eyes are alight. The radiance on his face makes Makoto's words die away on the tip of his tongue.

Makoto walks over to Rin.

Slowly, he lies down next to him.

Together, they look up at the clear blue sky, and breathe in the fresh air of a coastal summer.

 

* * *

 

Nearly a month has passed, and Amakata-san will be back soon.

"Don't worry," Makoto promises Rin, confidently. "She'll know what to do. She'll help you."

"You've helped me," says Rin.

Makoto does not feel like he has helped Rin at all. But he's caught off-guard by the look in Rin's eyes; and he thinks, maybe, he has after all, and there's something in the strength of that constant gaze that makes him believe in himself, just a little bit more.

 

* * *

 

It is late afternoon, and Rin's perched on the window ledge, sunlight streaming in behind him. He casts no shadow. His hair is even more vivid in midday, his skin paler, finer.

He looks almost unreal framed like this, like the improbable, impossible being that he is.

"Makoto, I've been wondering something."

"Hmmm?" Makoto asks.

“Why haven't you had a lost human before?”

Makoto looks up from his desk. "What do you mean?"

His hands stay busy, sorting through all the lost things that they collected today. Keys and compass points, childhood dreams as light as feathers.

"I mean," says Rin, furrowing his brow in thought, "you get all kinds of crazy shit in here."

Makoto can't argue with this. Rin's seen most of it for himself, by this time. He is so bored, and so very familiar with the classification system now, that he has taken to helping Makoto shelve the books. Makoto can't say he doesn't appreciate the extra pair of hands.

"I guess we do," says Makoto, with a smile.

"So why not people? I can't believe there aren't more lost people in the world."

Makoto puzzles over this conundrum as Rin hugs his knees to his chest, leans his head against the windowpane and stares at the hills in the distance. He gets this look in his eyes sometimes, when he tries to remember. It is a strange, far-off yearning, like the fiery spirit inside him is trying, trying, to burst forth, to spread its wings.

"I don't know," Makoto admits. "But maybe it's like Haru said… _You must be very careless, to lose a person._ "

Rin is silent for a while.

"What if they're _so_ careless that they never find me?" he asks, finally.

He's still gazing out of the window. His face is turned away, so Makoto can't see his expression.

Makoto does not know what makes him do what he does next. All he knows is, he has to, and it has to be now or this boy will be lost forever, it will be too late -

He stands up. He walks over to Rin, reaches out, and touches him on the forearm.

Rin whips around, startled.

Their contact lasts but a second. Something tells him Rin doesn't really mind it, but Makoto's not the touchy kind of person himself, and he's hesitant. Still, when he drops his hand he does it slowly, gradually, fingertips brushing past Rin's wrist, enough to feel the flutter of a pulse there.

_He's alive. He's so alive._

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that Rin is not a wandering spirit, nor a lost ghost; he is real, and he is a boy of flesh and blood that will one day disappear from here, and Makoto, in all his reachings and imaginings, will only be left with an enchanted painting, and the promise that somewhere out there, he is happy.

"Rin," says Makoto, with certainty, as his hand falls back to his side, "you will be found. I know about lost things. Trust me."

And as Rin's eyes, stricken, start to well up, Makoto hears his own words echo in his ears.

He realises something he should have realised from the beginning.

 

* * *

 

(And he catches a glimpse, the barest glimpse, of the answer to a question he had not given voice to, had not dared to -

Rin's heart _is_ warm, after all.)

 

* * *

 

When Makoto touches Rin for the second time, he remembers all over again why it is that he has guarded himself so carefully from casual contact, how dangerous it is for an empath, to _touch_ someone, to permit this intimacy -

With Haru, it's okay. They are perfect in their self-disclosure, Haru, like a tide that ebbs with Makoto's flow; Makoto, deep as the ocean trenches. They are also perfect in their hiding places, and Haru has learned where not to touch.

Rin has not.

He is _everywhere_ , a bold, erratic pulse. He is pushy. He is self-conscious. He is a golden boy, and he is the blush-pink of a sakura shower, petals grazing your cheek like a beautiful bruise. He is a vivid mess of contradictions. He is exposed. He is the most hidden, the most precious of all.

The emotions hit Makoto hard, like a wave crashing onto shore.

Rin's eyes widen at the same time that Makoto brushes the tears from his cheek.

He lets his hand come to rest, raises the other, so he's cupping Rin's face in his palms, and he tips his chin up. Rin's eyes are even brighter through the sheen of tears.

"You're alive," he whispers, " _I know about lost things._ No - I forgot…"

Rin blinks, and stares at Makoto. There's a strange kind of alchemy there, Makoto thinks; it shouldn't exist, fire and water together, but Rin makes it seem so natural.

“What did you forget?” Rin asks.

“The first law of lost things. It's: _every lost thing belongs to someone_.”

Rin cocks his head to one side. “That's. Kind of obvious.”

“Yeah, but you're not a _thing_. That's what I forgot, Rin. You're a person. And that makes it so easy to find your owner, doesn't it? A person can't belong to anyone, but…”

Makoto's voice trails off quietly.

“But themselves,” he finishes.

Rin frowns. “I don't really get it.”

“It's _you_ , Rin. You've lost yourself. Not your family, or anyone else.”

"I - _what?_ "

"Do something for me," says Makoto. "Close your eyes."

Rin does.

Makoto thinks that his lashes, up close, are so startlingly long and delicate.

"Shut everything out," he murmurs. "Just focus on me."

"Okay," Rin breathes.

Makoto closes his eyes too, and presses his forehead to Rin's.

 

* * *

 

_You are loved, thinks Makoto._

_You are loved. Can you feel it? Pouring forth from within. If there's one thing that my empathy's good for - if there's one thing, just one thing, I can do with this power of mine -_

_If there is one time I can be extraordinary after all -_

_Let it be this._

_You are loved, Rin. So come back. Come back to yourself._

 

 

And among the furious sea of images that Makoto senses, stirring in the back of Rin's mind, _torn_ and wrenched from the depths of a self far, far away, he sees something so sudden and familiar that it makes him gasp out loud.

 

* * *

 

Rin's eyes fly open at the same time as Makoto's.

"That box," he whispers. "I lost it. When I was a kid…"

"I know exactly where it is," says Makoto. "It was the first lost thing I ever found."

He takes a step back. He lets his hands fall from Rin's face. The sudden loss of contact feels disorienting, like he is stepping back on dry land after a week at sea. The oxygen around him is suffocating.

He tries to take a deep breath, grabs Rin lightly by the wrist and breaks into a run.

_No running in the library -_

The rule loops, automatically, in his head, he breaks it, silences it with a rebellious kind of joy, and rounds a corner. Rin, right at his heels, is breathless.

Makoto opens a blue door with a handle of gold, walks over to the chest of drawers on the far end, and opens the second one from the bottom.

It is a quality of lost things that they do not change. They remain just as they were, suspended in time, crystallised in a single moment; yet, as Makoto lifts the red box with a careful reverence and places it in Rin's hands, he sees it age before his eyes. The hinges look like they are rusting, the paint chipping.

He feels a rising panic, at first - maybe he got it wrong, maybe it's not -

But then it dawns on him that the box is not fading. It is catching up with time. Eight years' worth of time, to be exact, now that it is reunited with its rightful owner.

Rin runs a hand over the top of the box. He looks up at Makoto.

"I should open it, right?"

"Yeah," says Makoto.

"What will happen? Will I be found?"

"I don't know," Makoto answers, honestly.

Rin's restless fingers come to a stop over the clasp of the box. His conflicted gaze never leaves Makoto's.

"And if I'm found, will I - disappear from here? Will I forget you, and everything?"

"I think that's the idea," says Makoto, with a small smile that is braver, far braver, than he feels right now.

He reaches out, and places his hand over Rin's.

"Just open it," he says. "It's okay."

And together, they hear the _click_ as the latch comes undone; together, they prise open the metal lid with a slow, arduous creak.

Inside, gathered in a heap, there lie -

Four gold medals, tarnished with age. The year remains just visible on the top one, peeking out from beneath a blue ribbon.

_First place. Medley Relay._

"This… this was…"

Makoto's gaze flicks upwards. Rin's still here, gaping down at the medals.

"Dad," he says, quietly. "It's yours, isn't it?"

Something in Makoto vibrates again.

He recognises the feeling, from years ago, that thrumming in his heartstring, right in the middle of his chest; he lowers his hands from Rin's, forces himself to step away.

"You _did_ use to swim, Rin," he breathes.

"Yeah," says Rin. "Like my dad. I was looking for him... following him. Or at least, I thought I was. I think - "

Rin stops abruptly, and swallows. His words are coming in fits and starts, between sore, ragged breaths. 

"I think - the _me_ that I left behind - I didn't know what I was swimming for any more - "

Makoto aches so badly to reach out and touch Rin, to hold him. He does not dare to. He is afraid he will end up keeping him here.

He is already starting to fade. His lost boy.

Rin's voice is so soft now, barely above a whisper, but Makoto hears it loud and clear, deep in his heart.

"I was so caught up in chasing a dream, blindly, that I lost sight of myself…"

"It's okay," says Makoto again.

Rin looks up like he is coming out of a reverie. In truth, thinks Makoto, he is; _this,_ this was the dream, after all, and Rin has a waking life to go back to.

Their eyes meet.

Rin's aura is growing dimmer by the second.

And Makoto smiles, raises one hand in farewell.

"You're found, now, Rin."

"Makoto - "

Just like that, he is gone.

 

* * *

 

Makoto takes Haru's painting home that day.

Haru is waiting for him, at the top of the steps. It is minutes from dusk. The setting sun is at his back.

Makoto does not ask if he knew he was coming. Haru does not ask him what happened.

They sit down beside each other in silence.

And for once, Makoto lets himself cry.

 

* * *

 

Summer continues to drag on, slow and languid. He wakes in the morning, plays with the twins if they are awake, and eats a breakfast of egg on rice and orange juice. He takes a bento with him to the library.

He sorts the lost things, bit by bit, shelves the books while humming tunelessly under his breath. He drinks hot chocolate. Sometimes, he drinks cola. He has a number of cans left over.

He picks a random book from _410.5 Dreams_ , and reads it cover to cover.

Amakata-san comes back from her honeymoon. She asks if anything happened while she was away.

Makoto smiles, and says no.

 

The thing about life-altering encounters, Makoto realises, is that the world stays the same -

It is you that has changed.

 

* * *

 

April dawns in a flurry of sudden showers and passing sunlight.

Makoto is twenty-three years old, and he has just started his job as a full-time librarian. Today, he is on the duty roster for front desk of the main wing; in the afternoon, he will do his old familiar rounds in the other half, the half that is not open to public.

There is a kind of nostalgia in his empathy, memories tinged with bittersweet, beautiful nuances. Makoto is older now. He understands better what loss is, and what it isn't.

He has lost things, himself, along the way.

Outside, spring's first sakura is starting to bud on the bare branches.

 

* * *

 

Makoto hears footsteps coming to the counter. He looks up, smiling, opens his mouth automatically to say _welcome_ -

"Hi," says the red-haired visitor.

Makoto stares.

He tries not to stare. He is aware that his mouth is still hanging open, and he is probably making an incredibly unglamorous expression right now, and Rin is thinking he's an idiot -

 _Are you real?_ he wants to say.

He swallows the words, watches, half in disbelief, as Rin hitches his bulging gym bag up on his shoulder and nearly bumps into the person behind him in line. 

"Sorry!" Rin calls apologetically.

_You're real._

_You're real. You're here._

Rin turns back to Makoto.

"Uh," he says. "I'm new in town. Can you help me with something I need to find?"

Makoto smiles.

"Yes," he says. "I'm Makoto. Tachibana Makoto… the librarian. It's nice to meet you."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Rin's box is a reference to _High Speed!_ , where he found [his dad's old medley relay medals](http://janeypeixes.tumblr.com/post/57653723395/heres-chapter-8-and-thats-the-end-theres) buried in a box at the back of Iwatobi SC.
> 
> With thanks to Kira for reading this through and assuring me it was not a crazy idea.
> 
> Come and talk to me about magic realism, Makoto and all kinds of ships/gen love at @nahyutas on Twitter ♥


End file.
